Think you’ve got a long commute? Think again!

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here’s a 45-minute bus journey onto campus, and then there’s a five-hour commute from central France to Northampton. In an increasingly global job market, this option isn’t so rare any more. I spoke with Adrian Foden, a self-employed contractor for iPSL, a not-for-profit joint venture for Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds that takes care of all their cheque processing, about his weekly commute to England, being self-employed, and departure lounges.

What area of France do you live in?

I live in a region called Poitou-Charente, about half-way down the West Coast of France. The door-to-door time of my commute from there to Northampton is about five and a half hours. I normally fly into Stansted, but I also fly into Liverpool when I’m working up north. It’s really easy to get flights from where I live in France, as I can fly from Poitiers, Nantes, La Rochelle or Limoges.

What’s your job and what does it involve?

I’m the Head of IT change for iPSL. I run the team of project managers that run the change programmes for all of the banks. About a dozen people work for me and they each manage a change initiative, so something like putting in a new platform for image capture for the bank’s cheques. The project managers will run the project that contains designers, developers, architects, business analysts and testers – all the IT activity. It’s a very busy time for our industry at the moment, with lots of demands from different banks.

Why did you decide to do a commute of the length you do?

I don’t think the commute actually takes that long. When you think that there are some people who travel 90 minutes each morning and evening to and from work, that’s 15 hours a week of travel time, which is much more than I travel. I couldn’t do that every day. I travel for a condensed period at the beginning and end of each week. In the week I stay at a hotel very near to the office, so the daily commute is minimal.

I’m self-employed and work for a number of different businesses. I have lots of different clients so I go wherever the work takes me. This is my 11^th contract with iPSL in eight years. Before iPSL, I worked in Hamburg for a clinical diagnostic company, and I also worked in Gothenburg for a year,  South Africa for three years. Healthcare and pharmaceuticals was my speciality.

I travel much less than some of the people I work with – there are people who live in the North-West of England and it takes them about as long as it takes me to get to work

I’m also not alone. I’ve been doing this commute for eight years, and there are a lot of regulars on the flights with me who also commute between France and England. Architects, Auditors, Retail and distribution…many different people from many different disciplines circulating around Europe on a weekly commute.

Do you enjoy being self-employed? Would you recommend it as a career option to other people?

It’s hard to answer that one succinctly. It certainly has its nuances. Your skills need to be established, you need to be a specialist in a particular area, be marketable, have connections. It’s a very different skill-set to a nine-to-five office job. Your specialist skills need to be in demand and able to be sold worldwide. I’ve travelled a lot but I just go where the work is. It’s not a stable job, but I don’t have any children. I couldn’t do it with family commitments. You definitely need to be a particular kind of person who’s happy moving around the world. You’re forging new professional relationships all the time.

If you commute every week, how many flights a year is that?

It’s close to 100. I don’t fly over every week, occasionally I stay for longer than a week. But yes, it’s a lot of miles.

You travel a lot, you must see some interesting things in airports as such a regular? Do you have any interesting stories from your travels?

On Fridays, Stansted is a bit of a zoo with all of the hen nights and stag nights heading off. There’s normally a cluster of people in fancy dress which is always fun. There’s a lot of people-watching to be done in airports, so it’s good to be the sort of person who enjoys doing that.

If you were offering advice to someone else, would you say a commute of the same length as yours is a viable long term option? Does it become second nature?

You tune out that portion of the week when you can’t do anything productive. It’s not a pleasure, it’s just like being on a bus. You know there’s nothing you can do between those times when you’re travelling, it’s just part of your working week. I travel much less than some of the people I work with – there are people who live in the North-West of England and it takes them about as long as it takes me to get to work.